How to Solve These 3 Remote Meeting Challenges

3 of the biggest problems encountered in remote meetings

Meetings are a challenging and critical opportunity of collaboration for hybrid and remote teams. For productivity, it’s imperative to have open and clear communication. Unfortunately, effective communication is the biggest challenge for remote meetings due to interruptions and IT issues.

Therefore, it’s important to fully train employees on collaboration and remote access tools. Inefficient online conference tools that aren’t designed for professional remote meetings are prone to malfunction, involve complex screen sharing technology, and create meeting scheduling and joining difficulties.

1.  ‘Technical difficulties’

One of the major challenges of remote meetings is the usability struggle and technical difficulties with web conferencing software. Most online conferencing tools require downloading an application on the user’s device in order to join a meeting, which often becomes the reason why meetings start late and creates friction for potential buyers.

Some providers allow guests to join a meeting through a browser via a web client. However, this too can cause issues if your browser us out of date. In other instances, the user needs too much information to join a meeting, such as a PIN, a meeting ID, or a local dial-in number which can be difficult to manage and confusing for first time users.

2. Audio quality problems

Audio quality in remote meetings is critical because it’s linked with the professional competence of the employee. Lack of experience with audio equipment, poor technical equipment, or poor built-in technology are just some of the causes of poor audio quality.

Most web conferencing providers use the latest technologies for routing calls and transmissions to provide sufficient call quality. However, some providers offering solutions free of charge are still unable to provide up-to-date technology.

For a reliable and consistent call quality, one of the challenges is having sufficient internet bandwidth. Network consistency and concurrent downloads can also impact this.

3. Complicated screen sharing

Screen sharing is an important component of a remote meeting. With insufficient technology, screen sharing is complex and often avoided.

It could be that the transmission is lagging and slow during the screen sharing, resulting in poor resolution and considerable time delays. It could be that the content being shared is optimized for the local window size of the presenter and they may not know about the problems occurring for the other user.

With the current screen sharing technology available, most users find it convenient to share their entire desktop instead of just the application window. However, this may result in accidentally sharing sensitive data as they go back and forth between multiple documents.

Solution

To fulfill the need of employees working in different environments, Unified Communications and Collaboration (UCC) provides a platform with a single interface. It offers a powerful and flexible technology with a variety of collaboration and communication tools that allow the employees to work and stay connected in real-time with different devices and operating systems.

The ideal web conferencing solutions should have all if not most of these features:

• A single application for video conferencing, cloud VoIP and screen sharing reduces the hassle of downloading a different software for every need.
• Sufficient telephony features for unified communications that can be deployed from anywhere in the world.
• One simple kit for installation and connecting to a meeting in a few minutes.
• The appropriate hardware integrations for a customized meeting experience.
• Calendar plugins for easy scheduling of meetings.
• An admin center for full control including meeting analytics, provisioning, and single sign-on.
• Interactive features, Q&As, polls, and video to engage the audience with better quality.
• A simplified setup with webinar templates and modes for every need to create online events in minutes.
• Instant insights on attendees, registrants, and their behavior.

With the increase in WFH and remote meetings, it has become difficult for IT professionals to prepare employees and organizations for productive remote meetings. However, there are tools and software available to help resolve these issues.  

Further reading

• How to Keep Teams Collaborating When Working from Home
• Meetings in the Post-Pandemic Era
• The Anywhere Worker Guidebook